The Decolonisation of Zimbabwe

Kate Law

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367663735
• eBook ISBN: 9780429670640
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Rhodesia's illegal Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965 is an act that not only shaped regional politics but also had a profound effect on Britain's attempt to retreat from its empire. This edited collection brings together leading voices in the field, whose contributions – on the role of finance, 'big business', and the regional and international actors involved in the country's negotiated independence – update long-held historiographical wisdoms, signalling a revival in economic and diplomatic explanations for the country's decolonisation. In particular, they shed fresh light on the role(s) played in the decolonisation of Zimbabwe by economic (private business) and political (liberation movements, Western and Southern African governments) actors that until now have been studied with very limited access to primary sources.

As scholarship on Zimbabwe is currently dominated by studies that seek to understand the 'crisis' in which the country has recently found itself, this collection acts as a clarion call that reinforces the importance of studies of earlier historical processes. In doing so, the book provides a more nuanced understanding of the continuities and discontinuities between Zimbabwe's colonial and postcolonial history, and examines the roles played by external governments and individuals in the decolonisation of Zimbabwe. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.

1 Globalisation and Decolonisation

A. G. Hopkins

ABSTRACT

This article offers a broad reconsideration of the decolonisation of the Western empires. The argument suggests that existing studies are unable to capture the full significance of the process because they remain confined within the established borders of formal empires and concentrate principally on Asia and Africa. A much larger view is needed to relate decolonisation to a historic change in the character of globalisation. The first example, which is drawn from the crisis of the mercantilist empires at the close of the eighteenth century, outlines a case for including states within continental Europe in studies of imperialism, colonial rule and decolonisation. The second example outlines a programme for enlarging the boundaries of the subject after 1945. The material conditions that underpinned territorial empires, and the ideology that justified them, dissolved. With few exceptions, economic integration no longer called for, or allowed, territorial integration. Simultaneously, the moral order that sanctioned imperial dominance gave way to a new era of human rights. These profound shifts knew no frontiers; they applied globally. This interpretation is illustrated by tracing the effective decolonisation of the white dominions, by inserting an equally overlooked account of decolonisation in the informal empire, namely China, and by incorporating an example of internal decolonisation from outside the European empires: the United States. The conclusion suggests that the current historiography needs to be redrawn and that, in doing so, future studies of decolonisation will also compel other standard themes in post-war international history, such as the Cold War, to be rethought.

Introduction

There have been two great waves of decolonisation during the period that historians characterise as the modern world. Both began abruptly with revolutions, which then unwound slowly over at least half a century. The first wave broke in the late eighteenth century with revolutions in the New World that resulted in the creation of independent states in the Americas. The second wave followed World War II and produced a string of new states across Africa and Asia. These global transformations are widely recognised and have long been subjected to detailed scrutiny. Nevertheless, the existing literature is limited conceptually and, in consequence, spatially. The suggestion made here is not that ‘more research is needed’: that is always the case. It is rather that we need to reconsider the way in which we define decolonisation and allocate it to separate periods of history.

Globalisation and Decolonisation

Globalisation was not a uniform process that simply expanded and accelerated with the passage of time, but a series of unfolding phases or sequences. Each sequence advanced through a dialectical process. Global expansion created countervailing or competing forces; the struggle between them culminated in successive crises; each crisis resolved major incompatibilities and opened a new phase before eventually giving rise to a fresh set of conflicts.

Briefly put, there have been three such phases during the last 300 years.¹ The close of the eighteenth century marked the high point of ‘proto-globalisation’ and the crisis of its principal emissary, the military-fiscal state. The period culminated in a rash of major revolutions and was followed in the nineteenth century by a sustained and often violent struggle between conservatives, who tried to reverse the radical consequences of revolutionary upheaval, and progressives, who aimed to reaffirm them. The second great crisis, which struck in the late nineteenth century, arose from what can be termed ‘modern globalisation’, which was the product of two well-known processes: the spread of industrialisation and the creation of nation states. The transition was associated with the transfer of political power from the land to the town and with increasing social conflict. This was also the period of ‘new’ imperialism, which was a response of policy-makers to these challenges. The third phase, ‘post-colonial globalisation’, was initiated in the 1950s and remains operative today. An imperial dialectic was again at work: global integration of the kind that had fitted the needs of national-industrial states since 1850 had served its purpose. Imperial policy was obliged to adapt to changing circumstances: shifts in the world economy; the needs of the Cold War; the costs of holding on; the demands for self-determination. By the mid-1970s, territorial empires of the kind that had predominated for 200 years had lost their purpose and their legitimacy.

Self-evidently, these are vast themes that have already attracted libraries of research and cannot be covered in the space of one article. If it is impossible to survey what has been accomplished, however, it is still feasible to draw attention to what has been omitted. The comments that follow identify major gaps in the literature by citing, briefly, one example from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and, at slightly greater length, three examples from the mid-twentieth century.

The First Wave of Decolonisation

In the course of the eighteenth century, Britain’s advanced military-fiscal state extended its reach into North America and Asia, and created a thriving relationship with the mainland colonies and the West Indies in particular. The story of this relationship forms the substance of the study of British imperial history during this period. The rise of the mainland colonies, their growing differences with Britain, and the revolution that few wanted have all been thoroughly examined. Similarly, books on imperial history routinely cover Britain’s expansion into India through the agency of the East India Company and touch upon the Company’s interests in China. Recent studies have also begun to allocate additional space to Ireland and Scotland in ‘our island story’.

These established subjects will no doubt stimulate new thinking in future. For the present, however, I would like to suggest a way of widening my theme by including a continent that is omitted from current studies of imperial history: Europe. It is a commonplace for historians of Europe to refer to Napoleon Bonaparte’s ‘empire’, but they do so without assimilating the literature on Europe’s overseas empires.² Similarly, historians of overseas empires fail to recognise the commonalities between their specialisation and developments in Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. This is an opportunity waiting to be taken.

At the close of the eighteenth century, Europe’s military-fiscal states entered a crisis that resulted in revolution, war, and the political transformation of much of the continent. The French Revolution, the most important of Europe’s upheavals, led through the turbulent 1790s to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and his coronation as emperor in 1804. Napoleon demonstrated, with military decisiveness, how a republic could become an empire. He overran large swathes of Europe and established forms of government that anticipated the imperial regimes that were later established in Africa and Asia. In managing conquered territories, the emperor and his advisors distinguished between incorporated states, satellites, and allies, sought out collaborators, identified and suppressed ‘insurgents’, applied techniques of direct and indirect rule, and reformed existing legal systems. Napoleon’s imperial representatives showed a very modern awareness of the power of symbolism in art, architecture, styles, and public displays, and demonstrated, to their own satisfaction, the matchless superiority of their culture.³ They also dealt with different types of resistance, including ‘insurgents’, established networks of informers, and created paramilitary units (gendarmeries) to control the populace.⁴ Napoleon himself personified Hegel’s ‘Hero’, promoted an imperial cult that elevated martial values, assigned power to himself, and justified authoritarian government as a necessary means of bringing development to backward peoples. All these features of French rule in Europe anticipated much that was to come later in the century, when other Western states acquired or expanded overseas empires and adopted similar policies.

At that moment, the French saw themselves as creating a new Rome that would control and reshape the European order and, beyond that, the world. They wrapped imperial expansion in a civilising mission derived from Enlightenment theories of progress, and validated foreign conquests by asserting that the world needed to be rescued from barbarism, degeneracy, and sin, preferably by making it more French. According to Jules Michelet, the new religion of France was liberty, a cause that was universal, eternal, and morally superior to the grasping commercialism that characterised British expansion.⁵ These ambitions had momentum. Although Napoleon’s global aspirations were halted in Egypt in 1798, his plans for a new Europe under French domination were not frustrated until 1815. Similar claims were to appear under other flags in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The United States itself has been called an ‘imperial republic’.⁶

The analogy extends beyond 1815, when Napoleon was finally removed from power. The military-fiscal states that carried proto-globalisation to its highest point of development in the late eighteenth century suffered widespread damage from revolutionary movements and extended warfare between 1776 and 1815. The survivors limped into the nineteenth century; fractured remnants began to assemble a future. To representatives of conservative and authoritarian forms of government, the end of the French Wars was an opportunity to re-establish the pre-revolutionary order; to liberal reformers and radicals, it was the moment to carry forward or initiate changes that would transform politics and society.

This was the setting for Europe’s principal political struggles during the nineteenth century. The French Revolution offered a new set of governing principles that reverberated throughout the nineteenth century.⁷ In proclaiming liberty, the French Wars set in train a series of convulsions that included the decolonisation of Austrian territories in the Southern Netherlands and parts of Germany, the occupation of Spain and parts of Italy, and the exodus of the Portuguese monarchy to its refuge in Brazil. In imposing autocracy and creating new imperial states, Napoleon provoked the formation of what, in effect, were anti-colonial resistance movements....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction – Pattern, Puzzle, and Peculiarity: Rhodesia’s UDI and Decolonisation in Southern Africa
• 1 Globalisation and Decolonisation
• 2 Money, Banking and Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence
• 3 Big Business and White Insecurities at the End of Empire in Southern Africa, c.1961–1977
• 4 Tanzania and the 1976 Anglo-American Initiative for Rhodesia
• 5 The Anglo-American and Commonwealth Negotiations for a Zimbabwean Settlement between Geneva and Lancaster, 1977–1979
• 6 Race and Policy: Britain, Zimbabwe and the Lancaster House Land Deal
• Index